First look: New Beloit.edu nearly ready for its close-up

August 22, 2014

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Next week the college will be upgrading a few basic elements on the Beloit College website with the aim of making the site easier and more pleasing to read but also more distinctive and exciting for prospective students and their families.

The college’s web committee saw the site two weeks ago. Now, the entire campus is being offered a look at the site, which is expected to go live on Thursday, Sept. 4.

The ultimate aim is to "align the main page of the site more closely with new admissions materials and messages, while also being distinctive in our use of video-- much of which is student captured and produced," says Jason Hughes, director of communications.

Here are a few of the revisions you’ll notice:

A new menu bar up top: The site will now feature a floating white banner at the top that offers two new options (“Alumni” and “+ More”) in addition to the current offerings.

Drop downs streamlined: The top navigation options will also feature fewer drop-down options.

Overall design will be lighter, cleaner, due mostly to the removal of backgrounds and textures applied in the last redesign.

Navigational links will move from the right hand side of each page to the left.

Video and more video: The main page itself will now feature running video when accessed on a laptop or desktop. Beloit will be among the first to move beyond static photography in this space and the hope is that this helps better illustrate the energy that defines Beloit. Scrolling down on Beloit.edu you will also notice a number of videos produced by college staff and students that do the same.

What WILL NOT change:

Content: The content and architecture of the site will remain unchanged. The only exception is the main page (www.beloit.edu), which will feature content that draws from the admissions office’s new recruitment materials. New photography has also been added to the rotating windows across the site.

The site’s “responsiveness”: The last time the web team undertook a site-wide design refresh was March 2013. At that time, they made the entire site responsive-- that is, able to work on almost every platform (laptop to tablet to mobile phone). This responsiveness is still in place and the site adapts to both phone and tablet formats automatically.

Enough about what you’ll see. Go see it. The site is available at dev.beloit.edu.

If you notice any issues, please try clearing your cache (one way to do this is to refresh the page while holding the “Shift” key). If that doesn't work, you’d do the team a great service if you’d use this simpleonline form to share what you’re experiencing.

Praise and enthusiasm to share? Ship it to Web Designer/Developer Amanda Frisbee (take a bow, Ms. Frisbee) and the rest of the web team at webreq@beloit.edu.